Richard Byrne about his play Three Suitcases, on Ernst Toller and the relationship between literature and politics
Irene Zanol
Richard Byrne is a playwright and a journalist who has written for Time, The Nation, The New Republic and The Guardian. His new play, Three Suitcases, is about two encounters between Ernst Toller, his secretary Ilse Klapper and her husband, the later world-famous beatnik William S. Burroughs, in Toller’s room in the Mayflower Hotel in 1939. It tells us about refugees and exiles, about growing fascism and the attempt to erase and rewrite history.
What fascinates you about Toller? Did your view of Toller change while writing the play?
Richard Byrne: Ernst Toller was at the center of his generation – as a soldier, a politician, a writer, and an activist. He was a person who called to participate deeply in the world. Toller was also a remarkably complex human being. His faults and blind spots were woven into his remarkable empathy, generosity, and perceptiveness about the larger picture. He was a thinker and a doer. Sifting through the reactions of people to Toller’s strengths and flaws was illuminating. My picture of him changed often. But in the end, I kept coming back to his essential greatness. His deep commiseration with the suffering and pain of human existence – and his desire to relieve it in tangible ways. To awaken others to evils, and to commit themselves to acting against them.
Which character did you approach the easily, which one was the most difficult for you to grasp?
Richard Byrne: I felt on the firmest ground initially with Ernst Toller. He was a very public man. There were numerous reminiscences about him, including the piece by Christopher Isherwood with the detail that gives the play its title. Ilse was difficult, but there was also a sense of freedom in building her character from pieces I had assembled. Burroughs was by far the most difficult character. We know so much about Burroughs from 1942 or 1943 onward. But what sort of person was Burroughs in 1939? There are few accounts other than his own. One can track his movements a bit. But not exactly. Coming up with a language for a young William Burroughs was a challenge. To be true to the moment of the play, he cannot be the Burroughs of the Beat Generation. He was itinerant. Indecisive. Sliding into seediness, drugs and petty crime. Yet as I finished the play, and delved into Toller’s suicide, I found him to be a much more difficult character to grasp than when I began the play. His suicide is explicable, and, yet, has an air of mystery about it. Why that moment? Was it a cry for help? An accident? There was no note, such as Stefan Zweig left. It is not a mystery, but it is, in many ways, mysterious.
Ernst Toller and William Burroughs are well-known. Not much is known about Ilse Klapper-Burroughs. How did you discover more about her?
Richard Byrne: The search for more information about Ilse has been at the center of my efforts. When I started, there were: (a) some primary source documents from the US government that detailed her various efforts to get a visa and her travels; (b) Burroughs‘ scant remarks about her; (c) a story in German by a relative. So I attempted to fill in gaps in other ways. For instance: I walked in New York from the address where she stayed when she arrived in 1939 to the site of the (now demolished) Mayflower Hotel – just to get a sense of what her walk to work might have been like. I researched the ship on which she arrived in the United States (the SS Vulcania), as well as life in Dubrovnik in the late 1930s. I took these bits of information and built a picture of her character: sharp, tough, no-nonsense, and utterly unfazed by even the seediest elements of humanity. A woman of Weimar. Thanks to correspondence and collaboration with a scholar at the University of Vienna (Thomas Antonic), I have discovered much more about Ilse’s life, her family, and her attitude towards Toller’s suicide since the first three public readings of the play. As a playwright, I have been happy that none of this information significantly alters the portrait I drew of her in Three Suitcases. In some cases, it deepens it. And some new information may be woven into future drafts.
What makes the relationship between the three people so interesting?
Richard Byrne: There are so many dynamics to explore between these three characters. Who is this strong and smart woman between two men (one famous, and one destined for fame)? There are the dynamics of generations. Differences in culture between Europe and America. There is also dynamic in which Ilse is a bit of an antidote to the intellectual pretensions of both men. Most important, however, is that Toller and Burroughs represent two philosophies of the relationship between art and politics that are 180 degrees apart.
What do you think about the playwright Toller? Is there something exemplary for you or are there other parts of his activities that rather fascinate you more?
Richard Byrne: Toller is underrated as a playwright. In the English-speaking world, he has been victimized, in particular, by the mannered translations of his work in the 1920s and 1930s. It is good to see this problem is being addressed by a number of translators, and seems likely to be improved even more as his works continue to come into the public domain in the United States. One could have a long discussion of modern British and American dramaturgy in relation to Toller. In particular, why his plays are not more revived now. In the most succinct terms, Toller’s great works of Expressionism and politics – from Die Wandlung through Hoppla, wir leben! – remain extraordinarily powerful. The main bars to reviving them are translations and their scale and size. Most require large casts by present-day standards. Toller‘s later works seem to me more prosaic. Dictated by the urgency of the politics of the moment. Less poetic. He is at his best as a playwright when he taps into the power of verse.
Scholars often insist on separating the writer from the politician Toller. How do you see this?
Richard Byrne: I think such a separation is utterly impossible. One perhaps can separate Toller’s active political career of a few months from his writing career. That his career as a writer took wing after being imprisoned for his politics. But politics is the life blood of Toller‘s work. How human beings are governed. The mechanisms of oppression that produce hunger, destitution, despair, and moral and spiritual impoverishment. Toller saw politics as the key lever for change. First, revolutionary politics. Activist politics, also. He sought to spark human beings to awareness and action.
The play ultimately revolves around a central question: can a writer change the world with words? What’s the answer that you give in Three Suitcases?
Richard Byrne: This is a question that I hope is asked in every corner of the play. Toller tried to change the world with words. The words of his art and his advocacy. Did he succeed? One can argue that, in many senses, he failed. And yet his speech at the 1933 PEN conference galvanized a sweeping artistic opposition to fascism that took root and bore fruit in the 1930s. He stood up when other artists could not or did not. (Thanks, in part, to H.G. Wells.) Burroughs believed we cannot change the world with words. Human beings can find great meaning in words, and in art. But they cannot change the world with it – or even improve their doomed society. One can shape one’s own world. Survive. Keep individual perspective. Form small communities of like-minded people. Yet Burroughs and his fellow Beats (precisely such a small community of like-minded people) changed the world with their words in ways they could never have foreseen. At the center of the play is one other thought: Perhaps the success of Ernst Toller is found not only in his achievements, but in his enduring example. To speak bravely. To strive for better. Always. We do not always need an Ernst Toller. But in our moment, we can learn so much from him. And we must. That’s why we retell the story. So it is remembered.